Swizzle Stick

Dimmer

April 23 — Synaesthesia, sort of—turn something into something else for some reason (to better understand it, to see it differently, to cope, to escape pain, to glory in description or metaphor, or just the reality of it). Examples: turn sound into color, pain into flowers, trauma into a graphic novel… Alternative prompt: Auditory Sensory Meridian Response. Or both!


when the band comes back on for the encore
the room swells with shining energy silver
dry electrically pulsing & pumping within
the platinum surge of the crowd & the roar
of red-hot recognition of the opening chord
of impending twisted advanced guitar savagery
from its chaotic f-you wavering sustain
the track is a driven instrumental rude descent
threatening to derail - it's Crystalator
cutting with its whetted mineral gleam
& as clean as a line of cocaine

a vision of Nude Descending a Staircase,
an explosion in a shingles factory
that opening tension has a red hand of pressure
the taste of copper & chrome on my lips
all I want to do is dance, move & sway
with the crystal silver strangers in the pit
among the music's hot electric petrichor


Note: this is about my experience of seeing Dimmer, a New Zealand band on the excellent Flying Nun Records label, & their encore performance of the incredible Crystalator, a lyric-less fall down a cliff with guitars, which I fully recognise will not be to everyone's taste.

Nude Descending a Staircase is a painting by Marcel Duchamp.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=37O88ZNaOBc